My first dream about a website. Congratulations.

This morning my alarm sounded at 5:10am. Before it so rudely interrupted my beauty sleep, this is what I was dreaming about. . . .




I was standing on a Muni platform at Embarcadero station in that spot under the stairway in front of the operator potty. I was in my own little world not really paying attention. I looked up and saw a fare checker standing there. I apologized for not noticing her and fumbled for my fastpass. She told me not to worry, she only checks for fares from teenagers.


Then I find myself sitting on the train. I’m on the first car in the very first sideways seat. A different fare inspector comes on and starts checking the fares of teenagers. He finds a few and makes them walk to the front of the train. They are teenagers, but they are clearly Danish tourists wearing long flowing robes and flowers and ribbons in their hair, each carrying $2. On the way to the front the fare inspector asks the riders on the train what they all must carry with them at all times. Everyone says in reluctant unison “proof of payment.” The fare inspector asks what is considered proof of payment and again, in reluctant unison the riders tell the fare inspector what proper POP is. The Danes disappear. I walk up to the fare inspector and look at his nametag. It’s Cambria Birini. I go back to my seat and take a picture of him. He notices the flash but doesn’t know it came from me. He starts spouting off fraudulent California laws, saying it’s unlawful to take pictures on Muni and says it’s written somewhere in the Brown 700’s (whatever that is, it made sense in the dream).


I’m no longer sitting in the front of the train. I’m now sitting on the back of the 29, but an old kind, the kind with the squishy seats and the long backseat spanning the width of the bus, not unlike the kind I would ride to school in Long Beach. The guy behind me tells me I must be nuts for taking pictures and writing a little story for Muni Diaries and I should be afraid of the possible repercussions and retaliation from the fare inspector. I shrug it off.